


regret

by 14winters



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Everything I write I feel like I could continue, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I mean not yet...?, Implied/Referenced Character Death, but my mind is in a dozen different places thus this is a stand alone for now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 17:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9835907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/14winters/pseuds/14winters
Summary: Sherlock asks Joan a tough question and she can only give a partial answer.





	

“Do you ever regret…”

Joan was putting honey into her tea at the kitchen counter, her back to Sherlock. She kept stirring, waiting for Sherlock to continue. He didn’t. She turned to look at him, picking up her mug with the spoon still in it.

“Regret what?” she asked, her voice still heavy with sleep. She leaned back against the counter, watching the way Sherlock moved his hands to his lap, a sure sign he was nervous. He knew how much his hands revealed about him.

“Moving back. To the brownstone,” he said, studying the grains of wood in the kitchen table, his forehead heavily wrinkled.

She took a sip of her tea. Too hot. She set it down on the counter, so she could fold her arms across her chest and pin Sherlock with her hard stare he didn’t want to meet.

“Why are you asking me this right now?” she asked, careful to keep any peevishness out of her voice. She wasn’t annoyed, but extremely perplexed. And wary. Sherlock did like to be straightforward with her, but only when it suited him. He had deduced something about her and was seeking to confirm. It was an improvement on the early years of their relationship, when he had simply spat out his assumptions, couching them as scientific deductions in order to make it seem his view was completely logical. It had taken quite some time to get him away from that habit.

The way his shoulders moved she knew he was twiddling his thumbs under the table. His eyes did not move from the wood grain. “Your restlessness in regard to being unable to help others heal…you seemed to have adapted by applying your skills to Shinwell, and his training. But I question if that is enough for you. Do you regret remaining here, with me? Does it make you feel obligated to keep most of yourself tied to our work, rather than pursuing something more…” Here he struggled for words, struggled to keep his hands almost motionless. His mouth twisted.

“…Something more related to your original passions? Those to do with medicine, healing,” he finished, glancing up at her quickly before looking back down.

She had raised her brows without realizing it, and now fought to relax her features. He was throwing a lot at her, she took a few seconds to consider what she _did_ feel. All she knew is that he was wrong. The very suggestion that she regretted anything made her do the mental equivalent of a knee-jerk reaction. _No, of course that’s not how I feel_. She almost said the words. But the look on Sherlock’s face kept her silent a bit longer.

He looked almost…heartbroken. Whether from her lengthening silence or the fact that he must have already accepted an imaginary truth in his mind. There was a heaviness to his shoulders, a different sort of anger in his features that reminded her far too much of a time on the brownstone roof not so long ago, before Morland had come to New York to wreak more havoc.

“Sherlock, I’m not still here out of any sense of obligation to you. I’m here because I want to be,” she said, knowing if she didn’t say that much Sherlock would begin internalizing more toxic falsehoods than he already had.

“There isn’t more that you want?” he said, finally looking up at her, his shoulders shifting again.

“Are you talking about me returning to medicine? Because even if I had considered it, I wouldn’t be leaving the brownstone to do so. I want to be here, Sherlock,” she said, keeping her voice only gentle enough to carry her sincerity. In truth she was angry. That he still doubted her, still questioned her. But showing her anger wouldn’t do her any good, so she kept it concealed.

“I fear I have made you accept that view, by encouraging your conclusion that this was the best place to dedicate yourself to life as a detective,” he said, looking at her longer this time, searching her face for any confirmation of his words. She blinked at him, hoping the strain she felt around her eyes looked like confusion and not anger.

“I am not here because I convinced myself it was the only place I could be happy, if that’s what you’re implying.” She waited. He didn’t say anything, looking at some point over her left shoulder, every muscle in his body tense. It reminded her how tense she was, but she couldn’t relax.

“I’m here, I’m _still_ here, because doing the work we do, alone, away from you, it—it made no sense to me. I would rather do our work here, with you. The only reason I wanted my own place before was because I needed to know I could work away from you. I needed to find some sort of place for myself, because I only knew this work as it existed beside you, always. I wanted something different, for me. But Andrew taught me that…that wasn’t fair. To him, to me. It wasn’t what I wanted forever. It hurt too much to keep that solitude, Sherlock. I couldn’t…” The words fell out of her like some racing, wild animal, and only when the memory of Andrew lifeless in her arms took hold could she stop talking long enough to think. She bit her lip, took up her mug again. Sipped. It was still hot, but not too much.

“I couldn’t go back to living that way, even if I wanted to. It would be saying that Andrew’s death…meant nothing to me. He didn’t die for me to ignore what his death meant. For the work I do, the work we do. I stay with you because I need it, too. It’s not just for you.” She said the last words softly, almost whispering them into her mug, lifting it again to her mouth as some sort of shield. It wasn’t enough, but it was all she had to hold between them.

Sherlock was now turning her hard stare back on her, his eyes unwavering on her face. She returned his stare out of sheer stubbornness, though she felt suddenly tired and wanted nothing more than to finish her tea in her bedroom alone.

“You admit that you remain here because you feel you deserve nothing more,” he said, his strong emotions apparent in how the words fell, staccato, abrasive against her. She refused to show any response, holding her mug still in front of her chest.

“What I deserve and what I need are two different things,” she said, ignoring how her hands wanted to shake. She took another sip of tea.

“I don’t think they are,” he said, shifting his shoulders back as if he would rise, but something about her stance kept him seated. She was relieved, as much as she could be.

“You don’t get to decide what I need, Sherlock. I do.” And before he formed his response, she pushed herself away from the counter and left the room. He would try to continue the conversation later, she knew. As she pounded up two flights of stairs, berating herself for every word that had left her mouth, the memory of Andrew’s cold skin made her completely forget the mug of tea in her hands. Once she got to her room, it sat forgotten on her nightstand.

Sherlock went up to check on her an hour later, and found her asleep. Her comforter was pushed nearly completely off the bed, and her sheets were tangled almost beyond recognition around one leg, the rest of her uncovered. Only her red cardigan served as any real barrier against the cold. He softly crept in and pulled the comforter off the floor, draping it over her. He took the cold mug of tea on his way out.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this quickly without much thought. I first posted it on tumblr and have since edited a couple lines of dialogue so they made more sense. My intent is the same though. This was written mostly to tide me over until I can get myself to work on longer, more involved fic again. Right now it's hard for me to concentrate on bigger fic ideas, but I still am feeling frustrated with how Joan is/was neglected in the show. So here is another result of that frustration.


End file.
